Characters with "weaker feats" tend to have better-written stories? (e.g.: Batman vs Superman vs DBZ vs etc)

Have you noticed?

Problem

People on Comicvine seems so obsessed about which character is more powerful, so much so that these days most of the ATTENTION on the Battle forums are given to extremely powerful characters like Naruto, Luffy, Superman, Galactus, Goku, Dark Schneider, TTGL (And so on).

The likes of Batman, Daredevil, and Spiderman sadly gets not much love here.

Reality?

So have you realized yet? The most highly acclaimed stories tend not to be about how powerful the characters are, but rather more grounded on reality and focusing on the quality of the character - his/her motivations, personality, background, and the familiarity of the settings. E.g.: Lord of the Rings, Daredevil TV series, and The Dark Knight trilogy are pretty well-received.

It is hard (Not impossible) for stories featuring characters doing epic mountain/country/planet/galaxy level stuff to be well-received, because readers tend to find it hard to connect with - For both the character and the settings. The writers themselves would also find it hard to write stories which are not grounded on reality. E.g.: DBZ, Superman, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Yes, I know, the idea of critically acclaimed stories is pretty subjective. And I know that what I said isn't an absolute. However, I am talking about general trend and correlation.

My opinion

The obsessive focus on battle feats on Comicvine is so absurd nowadays, such that I imagine that in another universe where Comicvine exists, that version of Comicvine would probably include a "Dick Size" forums that obsessively talks about the size of fictional characters' penises, which includes a thread on debating whether Forrest Gump's package exceeds that of Goku's. Know what? This is exactly how relevant the battle forums is to the story writers.

Whatcha think? Discuss!

not a bad theory

@donatellorawks:

People on Comicvine seems so obsessed about which character is more powerful, so much so that these days most of theATTENTION on the Battle forums are given to extremely powerful characters like Naruto, Luffy, Superman, Galactus, Goku, Dark Schneider, TTGL (And so on).

Then stay away from the battle forums.

The obsessive focus on battle feats on Comicvine is so absurd nowadays, such that I imagine that in another universe where Comicvine exists, that version of Comicvine would probably include a "Dick Size" forums that obsessively talks about the size of fictional characters' penises, which includes a thread on debating whether Forrest Gump's package exceeds that of Goku's. Know what? This is exactly how relevant the battle forums is to the story writers.

Agreed.

It don't matter how powerful charecters are they are still always capable of being written into good stories. It is just easier for charecters like Batman and Daredevil to be written. If you want to think of a problem for Batman to come across, that is easy. If you want to think of a problem for Superman to come across, that is harder. Which is why Batman and Daredevil more constantly have great stories.

OP is focused too much on the battle forums that he sees everything fictional in battle forum sense and not minding the story and rationale to it.

subjective opinions on what is good story telling is very subjective. i never liked LoTR's point in storytelling because it's merely a war story in high fictional settings but i don't profess that it is that bad nor do i exalt the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya's quirkiness.

nah, I'm actually a very simple person. When I read comics or watch a movie, I only want to see the epic action scenes and enjoy it. When watching Man of Steel, I had never had thought structures like the following: "wow, Henry Cavill's Superman can lift at least 41 tons, 1 more ton than Goku!"

It is the battle forums culture I am referring to - they tend to have these thought structures, especially DBZ's. I do come in to troll the heck out of angry people by "wanking" DBZ/Batman occasionally but I am never obsessed with these thoughts when I actually watch/read something for entertainment.

the battle forum culture is only contained in the battle forum and discussions relevant to it. if you spent more time pondering on the story side of things instead of reading too much battle forums, then you won't be saying it's a battle forum culture at all. why must you focus on such a small niche when there are infinitely better discussions of such stories everywhere outside it ? why is the off topic and general discussion still a big point in comicvine ?

like i said, you focus too much on the battle forums.

Maybe... maybe because the battle forums are the most active part of Comicvine?

Even the Batman forums is so darn silent. Its nearly somewhat as depressing as the tragedies he faced all these years in the stories.

activity is only relevant to a point if there's nothing more than one liners to it and there's a lot of that in the battle forums. i suppose that you are going to comicvine for the battle forums because of that ? bravo, you are also part of what you mentioned in your OP, the batte forum cretins.

so make the discussion or find the relevant forums for it. the battle forum niche is so damn limited that it's practically insulting that people actually had time to target it instead of participating in such better discussion of stories.

I went to comicvine battle forums for the cheap laughs by "wanking" certain characters, which is what I do for majority of it.

However I do post on Comicvine about story-related stuff regarding Star Wars, Batman, Superhero movies, as well as real-life. Story-related stuff wise, they don't get much attention here. The point is, there's not much to discuss if people don't give much attention to it.

Perhaps Comicvine is after all, focusing a lot on fictional cross-universe battles. Don't deny it.

giving the views and reactions for the cheap laughs by wanking certain character is contributing to the battle forum culture. ironic don't you think for someone who chastises the battle forum culture ?

because dissecting the story is infinitely harder to do than saying one liners on who wins ? the fact is the one liners dominate the activity of the battle forums that wall of texts on how a character wins is only as relevant a second ago.

if comicvine is focused on fictional battles to a point that they are obsessed to it, then the whole front page of comicvine is irrelevant then ?

There's a difference between taking discussion of feats seriously and just being light-hearted in general. The former is apparently very dominant here.

what's the bad thing in an in-depth discussion of such feats when there are people answering to it ? because it detracts the point on discussion on storytelling ? congratulations, you just pointed out to me that people shouldn't be serious on what they love regardless whether it's the action or plot.

the fact that you used feats as a barometer for story quality is really saying a lot on how much you are into the battle forum culture despite you saying it otherwise. the two are not comparable in any way and the latter is purely subjective.

Oh they can be serious, people can be serious about anything. Is it good to be serious about a certain topic/idea, that's the question.

Me using feats to theorize something is not the same as using feats to discuss battles. And me using feats to theorize something is not the same as me actually taking the battle forum seriously.

why is being serious in a certain topic a bad thing when it promotes discussion ? you want people to be more pro active on a certain topic ? why should people be focusing on certain topics that is not for the reason that they love discussing it ?

whether you take the battle forum seriously or not is irrelevant because you are contributing to the activity of the battle forum culture by participating in it. the fact still remains here: story and feats are two different sides of the coin and to use the other as metric of quality to another is being biased on either side.

Its called criticism...

And I don't agree that story and feats are completely unrelated. As someone had pointed out to complement the OP's contents, when feats become more and more grand and epic, it gets harder for the writing to be grounded in reality. And at many times, a story grounded in reality is often easier to tell.

it's also called criticism to call out your criticism and as of this point, you want people to react to stories more than feats to a point that you call those people who love discussing feats as obsessed to it.

the subjectivity of a story quality is only as relevant whether you see the point of the story and its intended target and if you are going to be that guy/gal that goes full sweep on everything without even consider those two and even pulled up the point that grand feats are bad stories, then that makes you focus too much on the grand feats. i suppose melancholy of haruhi suzumiya or evangelion or akira are bad then despite the rich storyline to it ?

a story grounded in reality is not necessarily better. i suppose slam dunk is such a big hit for being so grounded in reality despite it being merely a basketball manga ?

Its not a sweeping argument. The OP had already mentioned that its more of a correlation. There are good stories that had full of grand feats and there are bad stories that had full of on-the-ground reality scenes.

Note. Correlation. The thread is trying to explain this correlation. Its basically about how easy/difficult it is to write certain types of story.

it's a sweeping statement once you use strong words such as "obsessed" and "reality" far too many times. you don't claim correlation with that and you even targeted a group that is way too different then your supposed OP to begin with. what's the point of mentioning the battle forums when story subjectivity and attention span are two entirely different school of thoughts ?

It's not about power levels it's about focus. A Silver Surfer story can be just as deep and highly acclaimed as any Daredevil story if they focus on the character, themes and concepts they are trying to get across. But if all the writer\fans care about is how hard\fast a character can put a bad guy through a wall then all we will get is mind numbing "Michael Bay" style crap.

that so-called sweeping statement is not related to my point that on feats vs quality of story... at all. The fact still remains that its not a sweeping argument to say that there's an inverse correlation between feats and quality of story.

except it became one by sheer insinuation and targetting of a group that has no relevance to your topic. why mention or even focus battle forums again ?

maybe because its related? The correlation between feats and quality of a story means that people are doing something weird, which is focusing on how good the feats are and dissing those with poor feats when those could have been good stories. Case in point: Daredevil TV Series

then you are pulling things out of thin air. the battle forums don't care for the quality of the story of these characters, they care for a fictional battle and to use that as some kind of statement to argue on story telling quality is merely you being projecting your own form of obsession to the battle forums.

yeah sure, if obsessed you mean i am obsessed with battle forum "wanking" as my own form of lampooning the phenomenon.

well that's the point here ? why do you need to include the battle forum and hardreason out its inclusion here when for all intents and purposes, writers don't create stories as dick measuring for a character's strength through all media ?

you want story telling quality arguments ? don't include things that don't focus on it.

@judasnixon: where you at with the meme?

???

Because this thread is battle forum related?

@donatellorawks: The few times I checked out the battle forums all I noticed was idiots trying to find any way that their favourite character would win and was feats but certain character feats don't count because they just don't. So yes I totally agree with you.

@sprior93: No more new Wonder Woman Memes.... My Mac Book crapped out on me, and I'm too stupid to figure out how to use a PC.......

>Extremely powerful characters

>Naruto

Lol.

Sigh...........

@donatellorawks: I am just kidding, relax. My opinion: let people on battle forum do their stuff and people who don't like the battle forums do their stuff.

The obsessive focus on battle feats on Comicvine is so absurd nowadays

Saga of the Swamp Thing is by far the best written comic I have ever read.

He is almost one of the most powerful beings I've ever read. Stomping Superman, taking over all of Gotham and beatin Batman with prep (lol), removing Antone Arcane's soul and defeating him (The Monitor stated Arcane was as powerful as the Spectre), tanking anti-matter waves from the Anti-Monitor during COIE, etc.

So, no.

Most people don't equate the battle forums to how enjoyable a character is. But that doesn't take away from how much enjoyment some get (like myself) from the forum.

Yeah I know, another failed attempt to get a rise from others. Hush hush.

By that logic, twilight is better written than may of superman's stories.

And if you think superman/batman/spiderman don't have feats, you have not read much of them. As far the battle forum.. it is -made- to discuss which character is stronger.

The OP's premise is wrong. You can have poorly written stories with less powerful characters too. As PrinceAragorn said, Twilight is not better written than most Superman stories. Possibly any Superman story. Yet Superman is many, many, many times more powerful than Edward Cullen.

Then another pointed to Silver Surfer, a character known to have extremely deep and interesting stories about the cosmos and morality, yet it has an incredibly powerful protagonist at it's heart.

For my own example, the Digimon anime tends to operate at higher levels of power and has a bigger focus on the progression of power through evolution than the Pokemon anime did, yet Digimon has substantially better character quality, character progression, story, themes, antagonists, and creature designs because it was written to be a story rather than a really long commercial.

The quality of the story entirely depends on the skill of the writer and their ability to work with the themes of the characters they are given. It can be said it's harder for some writers to write for higher power characters, but that's because it takes more creativity to design a plot that a more powerful character can't easily solve. Talented writers find a way, where as less talented writers don't know what to do with the character and end up having them punch stuff really hard.

As a writer myself some of my most interesting characters are the more powerful ones I created because it allowed me to explore things beyond the human scope. I like more powerful characters because I like to think about what the universe looks like from the perspective of something beyond humanity, and I like to be given scenarios that make me think of the relativity of morality, time, and sentience to something that has every right to perceive us as a collection of ants.

the battle forums don't care for story telling and only you are the one connecting that group insistently.

It's not hard to write good superman stories, really. People like Grant Morrison are perfect examples of that. They just, for whatever reason, typically go to the same ideas (depower Superman, turn him evil, have him fight Batman, etc.) that can be good, but are very tired.

And if you like realism, that's fine, though then I question why you thought superhero comics were the medium to go to for that. However, I don't much care for realism, though I do like some street level heroes.

I mean, on the battle forums? Yeah, that's about fighting and feats. There are other forums though, that are about other things than that. And to be fair, nobody is saying you can't use those characters on the battle forums. Just don't put a regular Batman against a regular Superman. Then again, don't put Spider-Man against a Batman either.

Yeah just don't apply battles forum logic to anything but the battles forum